


The Night Will Go On

by MakeTheMoon



Category: Actor RPF, Star Trek RPF
Genre: Clueless!both of them, Coffee is a love language, Getting Together, M/M, Pining!Chris, Technically slow burn but only in the sense of how many years this spans because this is short yo, pining!zach, pure fluff, this is sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24028219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakeTheMoon/pseuds/MakeTheMoon
Summary: At some point, they started giving each other the spare key-card to their rooms.Zach's love language is acts of service, I guess.
Relationships: Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	The Night Will Go On

**Author's Note:**

> This was titled "Coffee Matters" in my head the whole time I was writing it, but there's a cafe chain around here with that name so I just couldn't do it. So instead the title is lyrics lifted from All the Small Things by Blink-182, which this fic was low-key inspired by.

At some point, they started giving each other the spare key-card to their rooms. The first press tour was equal parts exhilarating and unbearable, and Chris wasn’t sure anymore who started it, but the tradition remained: he and Zach had constant access to each other’s rooms.

It was great, right up until the day he came back from a run, kicked his shoes into the corner, hauled all of his clothes off, and went to turn the shower on. And there was Zach, crouched into the corner of the shower, and really, Chris should have seen him - the frosted glass was still, you know, transparent, but his dopamine-addled brain could only focus on _get clean now. Then carbs_.

So it ended with Chris clutching his chest, yelling loud enough to be concerning to his room-neighbours, and tripping over the toilet as he stumbled away from the shower. He could feel where the bruise would form on his knee right away.

Zach, for his part, at least managed to look somewhat apologetic through the tears and laughter - _cackles, really_ , Chris thought, _the evil bastard_ \- and he did grab a towel as he slunk out of the shower and dropped it in Chris’s lap where he had settled against the vanity, rubbing his knee absently with his palm.

Once he caught his breath, Zach had the gall to say, “I thought you heard me, god, I didn’t expect to give you a heart attack. I was bringing you coffee, but now you’ll never forgive me,” and he said it in that way he has that sounds just dramatic enough to feel real.

It got better from there.

Having access to the other’s room meant they could swap clothes, or drink out of the other’s minibar, or make use of whichever balcony had the better view. Chris wanted to use the sock-on-the-door method for particular nights but felt it would be too juvenile, so they just stuck with a quick ‘Busy. Don’t come in’ text if it seemed like their night might take a fun turn with someone else.

Of course, that just meant that Chris army-crawled his way into Zach’s room one night at 3:00am to get his phone charger - they had made eye contact and Zach would have definitely murdered him with his eyes if he could have. Chris had shrugged as well as he could from his position on the floor and tried not to watch as Zach rolled over so the guy he was with had his back to the door long enough for Chris to get the fuck out.

The best part, though, was that nearly every morning he woke up to a hot cup of coffee. Zach had a habit, especially doing press in other countries, to wake up at ass-o-clock so he could be a tourist when it was less busy and no one could prove that he had done the tourist things. Chris woke up for runs, but at a much more reasonable hour. Zach would get a coffee on his way out and then another on the way back in, and he’d get a second for Chris on his way back to his room. Usually, Chris didn’t even stir and he felt like there was a coffee fairy that followed him around, but only on Trek press.

Doing press without Zach always felt like an exercise in his patience, and his patience often disappointed him. He loved most of the other actors he worked with, but Trek press was the only time he got to have a person nearby all day, which, admittedly, should have meant he’d be frustrated being around the same person constantly. But he and Zach worked well. Zach picked up his slack when he was obviously done with everything, and Chris softened Zach’s edges when the interviewer was in over their head. It helped. They were double the people with half the work, and it was good.

So, like clockwork, every time Chris woke up in a strange hotel room he woke up to the smell of coffee.

On one unusually blessed morning, he turned his head and caught sight of a bagel as well, laid out on a Starbucks napkin, with a note saying ‘Get your ass out of bed, you’re late.’ Zach hadn’t woken him, though.

********

The third time around was the easiest. They were better at traveling, waking up in a different place every couple days; they were better at interviews, too, less self-conscious, less about making themselves look cool. The whole cast at the London premiere had done this enough now that they got on and off the red carpet in record time, answered questions from the line of journalists and hosts as efficiently as possible, and made it inside with time to spare, time to get the drinks they desperately needed to be able to watch themselves on screen.

Chris didn’t know anyone who liked to watch their own movies. It felt like a mild form of torture. He was sitting next to Zach, miracle of miracles, and he patted the pocket inside his jacket for his smokes, then patted Zach’s knee and tipped his head toward the exit.

Thirty minutes later they had made it to a bar just far enough outside Hollywood that no one would notice them, no one would expect them to be there, one pack of cigarettes burned through and looking for another.

Zach ran across the road to the corner store, neon sign flickering cool green light onto the pavement, while Chris found a table, in the dark, in a corner, because these were things he had to think about now.

The pack of cigarettes hit him on the wrist when Zach tossed it onto the table, and Chris fiddled one-handed with his wallet and handed Zach a twenty, without looking away from his phone.

He looked up into the silence to Zach holding up the bill and squinting at him through his hair.

“What?” Chris said.

“What do you mean, ‘what’? What’s this for? Is this your uber romantic way of saying ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ Because I think you might need to work on that.”

“For the smokes, Zach.”

“Okay…” Zach said, “Don’t worry about it, they’re half mine anyway,” He pushed the bill into Chris’s breast pocket.

Chris felt like this might be the start of some weird Money Chicken game that he was not prepared for, so he said, “Think of it as payback for all those coffees,” and dug for the bill in his pocket.

A flicker of something Chris couldn’t name if you paid him flashed across Zach’s face; it looked like the face he got when he was drunk on whiskey, maudlin and introspective, and honestly the fact Chris knows the different types of drunk Zach gets means Chris needs more alcohol himself.

Chris gave up on finding the bill.

********

It’s not as if he dwelled on it. He lived his life. He got up and went to work and got a dog. He decorated his house and invited people over to prove it.

So, he didn’t dwell on it, but there were nights, usually late, usually less than sober, that lead Chris down a particular road. It was kind of a lonely road, but more than that it was an aching road. A bit of a pit in his stomach, or a brick maybe, something heavy but hollow that was difficult to shake for a few days, lead to weird dreams and little sleep. The dog helped. The alcohol usually didn’t.

The morning after one such night, the invitation came in the mail, the actual, real mail, who even does that anymore, and he knew it by Zach’s neat handwriting before even opening it what it would be.

He had never been more sure of anything than he was that he’d be in New York sometime between May and August. His agent made room for a weekend.

********

The best time to be in New York was probably not the beginning of August. It managed to have a smell and a feel that Los Angeles just didn’t get, and he cursed Zach for having a play in the summer instead of the much more reasonable fall or spring. He also did not want to be in New York in winter, under the guise that you couldn’t get out and see as much, and not because he couldn’t hack it in the cold.

But he was here, and Zach was on stage and he really, truly appeared to be made for it. They all did, the whole load of them, up there telling a story that meant something different to each of them.

He was invited backstage and uncomfortable about it, out of place, a bit too clean amongst the cast who were stage-dirty, sweating through their clothes with their makeup smudging, but they managed to grab him and then he didn’t want to leave. Zach’s knee was bouncing against Chris’s thigh, the heat bleeding through two layers of fabric, and the next time Chris tried to contribute to the conversation he had to try twice, the words catching in his dry throat.

Zach had insisted Chris stay with him because he had a spare room and he never gets to use it and he’d ‘really like to show it off at least once, Chris, come on, give me this one thing’. He had dropped his bags off at the apartment for security to bring up to Zach’s place, and it was easy enough to feel at home when they got there, too, his bag tucked neatly against the door.

Something hit him in the middle of a conversation that was mostly laughing, mid-wheeze like the most inopportune epiphany every. When Zach made him laugh like this, when Zach could straight-faced say something so hilarious that it took everything in him to be able to breathe again, that the heavy, hollow thing he wondered about felt a little more full, and maybe he felt a little lighter.

********

He woke up the next morning to the smell of coffee. For a minute he assumed it was through the door, from the kitchen, a coffee pot brewing 20 feet away. He cracked an eye open on a hopeful little hunch to the biggest ceramic mug he had ever seen that said, “I might look like I’m listening to you… but in my head I’m piloting the Enterprise”, which meant he woke up on a snort as he rolled onto his back to grasp for the coffee and take a few calming sips.

Zach was sprawled on the couch when Chris ambled out, and he was completely dressed, hair done, looking far too awake for, what, 8:00am? Chris was in shorts and that was about it. He didn’t want to think about what his hair looked like, especially in the face of Zach’s which had not a single hair out of place.

“I have one that says, ‘I am functioning within normal parameters’, and now I’m wondering if we didn’t get our parts mixed up,” was a perfectly acceptable way to say, ‘Good morning’, Chris thought.

“Please. You could never,” Zach said. Fair.

Zach raised his head once, then went right back to reading what was likely some article about, like, symbiotic chairs probably, and the discussion of tourist attractions and window shopping came up. Chris was pretty sure Zach was hinting that he needed a better wardrobe. But they went out anyway.

Zach insisted that Chris buy a certain pair of jeans, though Chris legitimately couldn’t tell the difference between these and the ones he normally wears, but when Zach insists it’s very hard to disagree.

They ate and got more coffee, and walked aimlessly through the neighbourhood. Zach pointed out places he deemed cool, and they mostly looked pretentious, but Chris could imagine them sitting in that one pub, or eating at that one cafe.

With Zach calmer than the night before, no adrenaline keeping him going, their evening was subdued. They ordered delivery and flicked aimlessly through the TV, with the dogs in between begging for scratches.

At some point Chris blurted something about, “I was out with the dance team that night,” and Zach choked on nothing and stopped him and said, “dance team?”

“Yeah. Did I never tell you I was on the dance team at Berkeley? I could have sworn I did,” Chris said. He felt heat in his cheeks, which confused him, because he never tried to hide that fact; he didn’t broadcast it, it was only two semesters, it’s not like he remembered any of it, but he wasn’t ashamed of it. Something about Zach just learning it, though.

Zach was overjoyed. He closed the pizza box that was still sitting open on the coffee table and pushed the furniture around.

With Chris peering at him from his sunken position on the couch, Zach said, “Well, you’re not going to drop that particular bomb on me and then not show me something.” His hands were on his hips and his eyebrow was reaching for his hairline and there was no humour in his face.

Chris sighed as he stood, then leered at Zach and said, “You can’t wear jeans to dance, man. Let me see those legs.” He added a wink for effect. It may have been too much.

When Zach came back from changing into shorts, Chris spent an hour teaching him a half-remembered routine to I’m A Slave 4 U.

********

He expected the coffee in the morning, but the mug he did not. He squinted into the dim light of the room for a moment too long, but that was definitely a boob. For sure. An entire boob mug. It was the oddest shaped mug he had ever seen, and he wasn’t even sure how to drink from it. The nipple was pointed toward him and he wondered if he was supposed to suck on it, but further examination revealed the opening around back.

His favourite part about their relationship was that they never really had to say ‘Hello’ or ‘Good morning’ or ‘How are you doing?’ so when he startled Zach after quietly shuffling into the kitchen and saying, “I have a dick one. Is this - are we in _Freaky Friday_?” it was with satisfaction.

“I don’t know, have you looked in a mirror? Wait, no, don’t answer - it’s clear that you haven’t,” Zach said, looking Chris over from head to toe and back.

“Shut it. Thanks for the coffee,” Chris said, coming to sit on the stool next to Zach. He was reading an actual newspaper, phone nowhere to be seen, and again he looked as put together as ever. Chris had managed to pull a t-shirt on with his boxers before emerging from his room this morning, but that was the extent of it.

“You’re on your own for lunch today, I’ve got to leave in, like, half and hour,” Zach said. “And you don’t have to thank me.”

“Why, because my love is enough repayment?” Chris said around a grin and a croissant he found on the counter.

The pause was just enough to be noticed, and Zach only answered with a snort and kept reading.

Chris filled a glass with water and leaned back against the bar facing Zach, his elbow brushing Zach’s bicep. It wasn’t on purpose, really, but he didn’t move back either.

Zach held out longer than he expected, but eventually said, “Can I help you with something?” and finally looked up.

Chris burped. Pretty loud. And then tried to cover his laugh when Zach said, “Nice. You come into my house, eat my food, and this is the treatment I get.”

“It’s the treatment you deserve,” Chris said, but he was smirking.

There was a short-lived staring contest, Chris with the smirk glued to his face and his eyebrow raised, and Zach completely blank.

Chris jumped a bit when, all at once, Zach huffed out a big breath that sounded like _Christ_ , and pushed his stool back. Zach wrapped his fingers loosely around Chris’s elbow and Chris watched him swallow, could hear it in the silence, watched his nostrils flare, and then watched him lean in.

He had barely enough time to think, _wait is this really happening what’s happening oh god_ , before Zach nearly closed the distance. Chris thought he’d make contact, come all the way forward, but he stopped just short with his nose brushing Chris’s and his breath fast and fanning across Chris’s lips, and Zach was definitely not looking him in the eye, was definitely staring at his mouth, waiting.

And there was nothing else to do, no alternative Chris could conceive of where he didn’t tilt his chin up just enough to touch, lips brushing; chaste more than anything, and over way too fast.

Zach let out a breath he had been holding and stepped closer, one foot between both of Chris’s and pushed him back into the countertop. His fingers were still around Chris’s elbow, tighter now, palm hot on his bare skin, and he used his other hand to push at Chris’s hip, more delicately than Chris would have expected. He had wormed his thumb under Chris’s shirt and was rubbing circles into his hip with it, and it felt good, so good, and it wasn’t anything Chris had never felt before, but something about it being Zach’s hand, Zach’s thumb - it felt like it belonged, somehow.

When Zach leaned forward this time he did make contact, more purposeful, lips parted and waiting. So Chris gave as good as he got, pushed back, nipped at Zach’s bottom lip and when Zach made a sound on a sigh, in the back of his throat, Chris felt the weight in his belly shatter, all at once, and fit into place in the hollowness. He felt it balance and settle and if he’d known this is all it would take, maybe he would have made it happen long ago.

Belatedly, he realised he was clutching at Zach’s shirt at his waist, wrinkling it. He let go and smoothed it out with his palm and murmured, “sorry,” against Zach’s mouth.

Zach huffed a laugh and shook his head, said, “If you think I care…”

Chris flattened his hand against the middle of Zach’s torso and pushed, leaned his head back and glanced around. “You’ve got to leave in fifteen minutes. I don’t know about you, but there’s not a lot I can do in fifteen minutes.”

It felt like the temperature of the room raised twenty degrees with Zach staring at him that way, head tilted. Zach ran his tongue along his bottom lip, and Chris mimicked him without thought and felt a flutter as he watched Zach track his tongue.

He could breathe again when Zach stepped back, the static in the room sizzling away with some space between them. Until Zach said, voice low, “I’d like to test that.” He cleared his throat and continued, “But you’re right - I’ve got to go.”

It should have been awkward, the next fifteen minutes; at least, it would have been if it had been anyone else. They cleaned up together, Zach went to brush his teeth while Chris flopped into the corner of the couch, one foot on the floor, the other propped onto the cushion next to him, and turned the TV on.

“Alright, I’m out,” Zach said, “I trust you can find yourself some food?”

“Zachary, please. I’m not a child,” Chris said, pouting for effect.

Zach rolled his eyes and then his sleeves, and said, “I’ll be home around 6:00. Think about what you want to do for dinner - I’m not averse to delivery again.”

“Sounds good. I’ll be here,” Chris said. It was innocuous, something he’s said a hundred times instead of ‘goodbye’, but the grin on Zach’s face as he turned toward the door had it feeling different.

Chris thought this might be the longest day of his life.

********

It wasn’t, it turned out, because he got an idea. And if Zach were here, he’d say, “that’s never good,” and Chris would hit him and pout and say, “Shh, I have good ideas.”

This _was_ a good one though.

The apartment door opened slowly, squeaking a little obnoxiously as Zach peaked in and sized up the kitchen, eyes landing on Chris and staring.

“Uh,” Zach said.

“Yeah. It’s a bit of a fucking mess, but uh. Dinner!” Chris said, with a flourish of his arm toward the table, and a grin.

“What,” Zach said. His cheeks were starting to twitch upward, and he was already post-show flushed and sweaty. Chris’s stomach flipped.

“Eat up,” he said, “This is actual coffee payback. Although, I think I’ll have to do this a few dozen more times for us to be even, but… you know. It’s a start.” He sat and kicked a leg of the other chair, pushing it out as an invitation.

“A few dozen,” Zach replied.

Chris looked up and saw the smile that had spread across his face.

“Yeah, and you better enjoy this one because it’s going to be a while before we’re together long enough for me to cook again.”

They drained their bottle of wine quickly, and Zach teased Chris about his lack of dessert (“I’m not a baker, okay, I’m barely able to cook”), and they sat for a long time once they were finished eating, conversation coming easily. Chris didn’t know why it surprised him, nothing had changed, but the air felt thicker, and hotter, and the wine couldn’t be fully blamed for that.

“I’m moving back to LA,” Zach blurted as Chris put his hands on the table and began to stand. He sat back down, slowly. “So, you know. You can make it all up to me sooner rather than later, anyway.”

“Why didn’t you say?” Chris wondered if Zach _had_ told him, in one of the moments that Chris was too tired to pay attention, or zoned out, or any of the other many reasons he often stopped paying attention to Zach.

“Because I just decided.”

Chris stood and rested against the table next to Zach, bowed down, slid his hand up Zach’s shoulder, to his neck, around the back of his head, and kissed him.

Zach was quick to respond, standing and grasping at the underside of Chris’s thighs and lifting him onto the table, pulling Chris’s legs around his hips and gripping his knees.

Between them, Chris laughed into Zach’s mouth, unable to kiss back properly, grinning as Zach trailed his mouth from the corner of Chris’s lips to his jaw, under his ear. He rolled his hips into Chris, and around a groan Chris said, “wait, just- hold on.”

Not for the first time, Zach would have murdered Chris with his stare if he could have, so Chris said, “I don’t mean like that. Just. We’ve got time. All the time in the world.”

And if he could have been murdered by Zach’s stare sometimes, this face would have melted him from the centre out. Zach chewed on the inside of his bottom lip, fought a smile, and rested his head on Chris’s shoulder, nosing at his collar.

“All the time in the world?” he asked.

“Yeah. Plus, I deserve free coffees every morning.”

There was a pause, and then Zach was biting his collarbone and pushing back into him, laughter rumbling from deep in his abdomen.

Yeah, they’ve got time. All the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, all those mugs are real mugs.
> 
> "Piloting the Enterprise" - https://www.amazon.com/OttoRiven101-Trekkie-Birthday-Piloting-Enterprise/dp/B07GN8JTJ6
> 
> "Functioning within normal parameters" - https://www.amazon.ca/Functioning-Within-Normal-Parameters-White/dp/B07C9ZHVJ6
> 
> Boob mug - https://www.amazon.com/Boobie-Boobs-Ceramic-Coffee-Water/dp/B07GZDJP2Y
> 
> Dick mug - https://www.amazon.com/Willy-Penis-China-Novelty-Funny/dp/B0015CFMVY
> 
> Thank you for reading! This was my first Pinto de Mayo and I'm so sad I missed out on so many previous years, but I'm glad I was able to participate this time :)


End file.
